Take The Metro To NATS Park

The Nationals Park Stadium: Home of The Washington Nationals

The Washington Nationals baseball team is based in Washington DC. The team has been using the Nationals Park Stadium, which is located in the South Capitol street, Southeast DC along the Anacostia river. Since 2008 the Nationals have been calling this park their home and Washington Nationals tickets have increased in price every year since its inception. They had temporarily used RFK stadium waiting for the completion of Nationals Park stadium as their training ground. They had been using RFK stadium from 2005 to 2007 to host other teams.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE PARK
The park was jointly designed by Populus and Devrouax & Purnell Architects & planners with an initial budget of $611 million. Infrastructural upgrades and transportation increased the amount by $84 million and the final cost was at $783.9 million. The ground breaking ceremony was held on May 4, 2006. It took two years to complete building the national park since the architects used a design build approach technique. The stadium is owned by Washington Convention and Sports Authority and are the current managers of the stadium. The financing was done by through Deutsche Bank by the Local government.

OPENING OF THE PARK
The facility was opened for public on March 22, 2008 with a college game as the opening game. The exhibition game was played on March 29, 2008 with Washington Nationals hosting Baltimore Orioles. They won 3-0 against the Baltimore Orioles. The first season game was played the day after with the home team hosting the Atlanta Braves. Also in this game they won by 3-2. During that season they won 52 and lost 102 games which went down as their worst performance on record.

FEATURES OF THE PARK
The park, which is in the South Capitol street was built to hold 41,888 seats, but it has been reduced to hold 41,418 seats in order to increase floor space. The players play on real grass. There are 79 suites located in the park and are based on three levels. The main scoreboard is 31m long and 14m high, 5 times the size of that of RFK stadium. Seating arrangement allows for a good view of the action down below with tickets going for less than $10 on certain regions of the stadium. The three levels of seating are Stars & Stripes club, PNC diamond club and the Presidential suite.

The presidential seats are right behind the home seats and attract a fee of about $350. There are 110 bike racks near walking racks that will cater for fans who come by bike to watch the game. WMATAstation caters as the transportation hub of the Nationals park. The Washington Nationals have managed to attract an average of 29,000 fans per game according to the 2008 season.